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CRACKING CRYPTIC CROSSWORDS by Colin Dexter

'This is the last book written by Colin Dexter, the creator of Inspector Morse. Colin was a prize-winning cryptic crossword setter and solver. He was also a gifted teacher. He wrote this entertaining and instructive little book in order to help those many people who find the clues in cryptic crosswords too difficult to understand. Cracking Cryptic Crosswords is a masterful and engaging guide for the would-be cryptic crossword solver, which has been awarded 5 stars by Amazon reviewers.' ​

Dr Gray's Walking Cure

“All you need to get fit, lose weight, and keep it that way – this book gives you tips on how to do it simply by walking more: don’t take the escalator, use the stairs; walk briskly; get off the bus earlier than usual. These and many other common sense suggestions are all contained in this little book to help you change your lifestyle for good, and for the better.”

Review:

“Muir Gray, a ceaseless champion of walking as a means of tackling obesity and inactivity, is one of the reasons why walking for health is now taken more seriously. This book clearly lays out the benefits of walking, explains the exercise-science stuff in accessible terms, and usefully suggests easy programmes for building up walking, based on ‘vital steps’. The writing conveys much of the energy, charisma and humour of the author himself.”

Oxford Medicine: A Walk Through Nine Centuries by Eric Sidebottom

A fascinating profusely illustrated little guide-book for a two hour walk in Oxford round sites with links to medicine. This takes in sites dating from the twelfth to the twenty-first centuries, including brief histories of medical institutions, breakthroughs, and advances, and the people behind them. Illustrated on every page with photographs.

HOW TO GET BETTER VALUE HEALTH CARE by Muir Gray 3rd edition

New edition for the challenges facing the NHS in 2017 ​We are now in a new era – the era of better value. It is no longer sufficient to provide safe, effective, and high quality care. These characteristics will be taken for granted. Value is the most important term for the next twenty years.

​Value is the most important concept for healthcare worldwide for the next twenty years. Great progress has been made in all health services over the last fortyyears but three problems remain. One is unwarranted variation in investment, cost, and outcome, which reveals the other two:

Underuse of high value interventions. This results in■ failure to prevent death and disability, which may aggravate■ inequity.Overuse of lower value interventions. This results in■ waste – activity that consumes resources which could give greater value if used for another group of patients, which may also result in■ patient harm.​In addition, need and demand are increasing faster than resources. It is therefore essential to focus on value, which embraces, but is broaderthan, quality and cost-effectiveness. In the NHS in England the focus is on Triple Value:

■ Personalised Value – determined by how well the outcome relates to the values of each individual.■ Allocative Value – determined by how well resources are distributed to different groups in the population.■ Technical Value – determined by how well resources are used for all the people in need in each group.

Value-based healthcare embraces the paradigms of quality improvement and evidence-based decision-making. The aim is better value both forindividuals and populations. This book summarizes the key concepts and skills to reduce waste and increase valuefor people who pay for or manage healthcare resources, including clinicians and patients’ organisations.

The How To series

HOW TO BUILD HEALTHCARE SYSTEMS by Muir Gray

A systems approach to healthcare recognises the vital importance of self-care and informal care. It provides a tool to ensure that the right patients access the right care, and that the care is delivered right. It can answer the currently unanswerable question ‘Are we – as patients, payers, or clinicians – getting maximum value from the resources invested in our core businesses?’

The core businesses of healthcare consist of symptoms such as chest pain, and conditions such as epilepsy, bipolar disorder, or asthma. How To Build Healthcare Systems helps you answer questions such as ‘What are healthcare systems and how are they built? Why are they important? How are they best managed? How do systems fit in?’

HOW TO CREATE THE RIGHT HEALTHCARE CULTURE by Muir Gray

Although everyone feels it, the culture of a health service is rarely talked about openly, except on hospital websites where the mission of the organisation is trumpeted loudly even though very few of the staff could repeat its core message. This is, however, changing. As healthcare worldwide reaches crisis point, it is recognised that structural reorganisations will not solve the problems ahead, which are common both to tax- and insurance-based services, as well as to public and private systems. We need systems development and culture change. Using Edgar Schein’s definition of culture as: ‘The shared tacit assumptions a group has learned in coping with external tasks and dealing with internal relationships’, How To Create The Right Healthcare Culture provides practical guidance for clinicians, and those who pay for or manage health services, on how to create the right culture for 21st century healthcare.

HOW TO PRACTISE POPULATION MEDICINE by Muir Gray

How To Practise Population Medicine focuses on the clinician’s responsibilities for productivity, efficiency, better value, sustainability, equity, and the whole population. In addition, it sets out the wide range of skills needed – to create systems, build networks, map pathways, engage both patients and the public, manage knowledge, build and use a budget, and create the right culture. This is the future, and it is needed now. Population healthcare, not institution-based healthcare, is the new paradigm, and clinicians have a key role to play in its creation.

HOW TO GET BETTER VALUE CANCER CARE by Muir Gray and David Kerr

As Don Berwick emphasises: ‘In a zero-sum budget time, when what healthcare gets, other worthy social and private purposes lose, the pursuit of “value” has become critically important. How can cancer care systems be redesigned to better meet the social need for better care, better health, and lower cost? The crystal clear discussions in this book raise many tough questions. Knowing how cancer care could change does not automatically tell us how it should change. It uncomfortably faces us with questions of value, choices about the relative importance of different outcomes, and what we want in terms of distributional equity.’

THE KEEPER AND HIS LAD Cy and Greg McLatchie

An evocative glimpse, in poetry and prose, of working and growing up in the borders of Scotland in the late fifties and early sixties, punctuated by perceptive commentaries on topical subjects of the day, such as American segregation, and Christine Keeler.

Cy McLatchie, one of 13 children, wanted to study law, but his family could not afford further education and he had to leave school at 14. He became a gardener, won prizes for boxing, and was a chess champion. On his appointment as gamekeeper to the Duke of Buccleuch, the family moved to Thornhill in Dumfriesshire. Greg went to a new school and his father helped him with his homework. As a result they both discovered a love and exceptional talent for writing.

Greg McLatchie is now a Professor of Sports Medicine and recently retired surgeon in Hartlepool.

Albi Rosenthal was a music dealer, collector, and musicologist.Widely regarded as expert on the authenticity of music manuscripts, he acted for and advised many of the world’s greatest institutions on acquisitions, including the Bodleian Library in Oxford and the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel. Obiter Scripta is a collection of Albi Rosenthal’s written work and contains specific studies on Mozart (the field in which he was pre-eminent), Monteverdi, Paganini, among others, which demonstrate the broad range of his extensive knowledge of music.